A History of the Presidency - Electoral college

The electoral college has long been a contentious feature of the
presidential elections. The opposition to it was especially clamorous
after disputed canvasses, as those of 1824 and 1876 were, and that of 1888
when Benjamin Harrison (1889–1893) won in the electoral college
despite receiving 100,000 fewer popular votes than Grover Cleveland
(1885–1889; 1893–1897), his chief opponent, and that of
2000, when the Republican, George W. Bush (2001–), defeated Albert
Gore although the Democrat received 540,000 more popular votes. In his
inaugural address, Bush made no mention of how narrow his victory had
been, but later conceded sardonically: "I wasn't exactly a
landslide winner." Andrew Jackson (1829–1837), when he was
finally in the White House after being bested in the electoral college in
the election of 1824, proposed the direct election of presidents by the
people in each of his Annual Messages to Congress. (He also wished to
restrict presidents to one term of four or six years.)

When the Convention came to the end of its deliberations, the final
phrasing of the finished document was referred to a Committee of Style
that turned the work over to Gouverneur Morris of New York. Morris was the
third major figure in the making of the presidency. A few years earlier he
had had a large part in the writing of his state's constitution,
which provided for a strong executive. Among many delegates in
Philadelphia, New York's arrangement seemed an ideal model to
follow. With respect to the presidency, Morris left standing the language
already agreed upon, which is the heart of Article II of the Constitution:
"The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United
States of America," with no qualifying statement whatsoever. The
explanation was not far to seek. One delegate put it this way: "I
do [not] believe the [executive powers] would have been so great had not
many of the members cast their eyes toward General Washington as
President; and shaped their Ideas of the Powers to be given a President,
by their opinions of his Virtues." The expectation that Washington,
who inspired unbounded confidence in his integrity and probity, would fill
the chair of president, likely spurred the convention to make the
president commander-in-chief and to provide for a four-year term renewable
without limit.